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TaylorMade

Success is Driven by Understanding Your Vertical
TaylorMade logo

Global Athletic Brand Shifts with Every Stroke

Client

TaylorMade Golf exists to create performance in golf. The company manufactures clubs, bags, and accessories.

Location

Headquartered in Carlsbad, CA, USA

Services provided

  • Social media audit and competitive analysis
  • Social media roadmap
  • Full schedule of step-up projects including full launch and holiday planning

Overview

Every small and nimble team that plays in the social arena needs allies to stay ahead of the competition and continually evolve. When that task is complicated with regular travel, pro golf tournament schedules, and super-short turn-around times, having a resource with an eye on the big picture is even more critical. Here’s how TaylorMade Golf (TMG) expanded their online presence and commerce with a little help from their C&C friends.

Situation

TaylorMade Golf wanted to shape their social media and content marketing strategy, allowing the company to grow the game amongst new enthusiasts, both young and old, and solidify their brand reputation of expertise and performance.

The social media team was the department head and two coordinators. Brand advocates run the chat program and customer service provides a representative for issue resolution. In addition, the social media team works closely with the web, e-commerce, brick and mortar, brand, design/production, retail, and public relations departments.

With such a lean social media team, it’s very important that the team members are active where they’re most effective: online.

Challenges

  • TMG wanted to expand their wholesale-driven retail model to build a direct business, using content marketing and social media to do that, and start attributing sales to social and digital.
  • TMG needed clarity on where they played—where their social media voice and images were truest to their brand.
  • Like many evolving businesses, TMG is working on the case for using social media for customer care.
  • TMG has a small (and mighty!) internal team who travels nearly every week. Based on tournament “wins,” they have very little turnaround time on social posts so they must be nimble and multi-skilled (graphics + copy + technical savvy, etc).
  • They must abide by PGA rules and regulations for tournament and player shares (very limiting to brands).

Solution

Convince & Convert started by auditing the existing social channels and content marketing of TaylorMade Golf (and their accompanying brands). We then built out a strategic roadmap to support the business case for social media and content marketing. This gave us a valuable baseline to work from and highlighted immediate opportunities. At the same time, we also helped the brand translate and communicate their story.

TaylorMade-Ryan-Lauder

Once we delivered the initial audit and short and mid-term recommendations, Convince & Convert tackled a series of micro-projects, working at the direction of TMG (and in some cases, alongside) to expand, optimize, and improve social media marketing.

Convince & Convert and TaylorMade Golf then worked together on the following micro-projects:

  • Governance recommendations including best practices for a Global Center of Excellence
  • Full strategic support in conjunction with the Lithium community launch
  • Enhancing ongoing metrics, measurement, KPIs, and merchandising of data internally at TMG
  • Operational recommendations including the human and technical resources needed for success
  • Working with TMG leadership to craft a comprehensive, long-term business case for social media
  • Wrote Global and Player Social Guidelines for athletes and global marketing teams and player engagement more closely aligned with the brand
  • In addition to these and other potential micro-projects, we will work with TMG as ad hoc counsel to answer questions and assist with implementation of new initiatives.

Ultimately, we helped TMG carve out a niche in the golf space so that they didn’t sound like everybody else.

Results

  • Convince & Convert helped TMG launch their own online branded community in 2016, providing advice and counsel along the way in the areas of user experience, content ideas, and the overall development.
  • We helped TMG achieve tool optimization in their technology stack, leveraging best-in-class solutions for performance optimization.
  • Player expectations are high, and we’re able to get high results for social media activation.
  • Together we built a distinct presence in the golf space with a stand-out voice and image.
Client
Texas Exes – Alumni Association for The University of Texas
Location
Austin, Texas USA
Services Provided
Situation
Like many alumni organizations across the country, Texas Exes saw declining engagement, challenges with hitting giving goals, and in general, had a harder time getting the attention from their target audiences. It was a good time to re-connect and re-assess alumni sentiment and needs.
Challenges
Although the Texas Exes had a strong organization and following, they still faced significant challenges:
  • Generally speaking, the University of Texas at Austin has a very decentralized culture, which pervades every related organization and department.
  • Texas Exes wanted to make sure that teams used to operating independently didn’t just see this research as something for the marketing team to use in crafting giving pitches, but data that could inform and guide every area, from student outreach, to events, to fundraising and beyond.
Solution
Convince and Convert started by implementing an attitudinal survey that asked alumni how they felt about the association generally, events and benefits, as well as their feelings about their time at the University of Texas at Austin. Convince & Convert then performed a thorough analysis, developed personas, recommended strategies, and content ideas that would support the needs and desires of the alumni. One of the key findings was that the alumni’s main unmet desire was more professional interaction, including networking, mentoring and job opportunities. When COVID hit, it became clear that they had a significant opportunity not to just move events online but do so in a strategic and intentional way. Texas Exes had been in conversation with Graduway, a platform that provides a private social network with robust features, for more than a year. In six weeks, Convince & Convert helped the Texas Exes accelerate this concept, finalize their contract, and plan a launch strategy. In addition, Convince & Convert helped organize conversations beyond just Texas Exes alumni needs to include Career Services, Athletics, and a number of colleges within the university to ensure they all had some ownership in how their corner of the platform would come together.
Results
Convince & Convert crafted plans for each of their service areas to evolve to better match the needs uncovered in the survey. Texas Exes was proud to have the most successful higher ed launch Graduway has ever experienced and are using the insights gathered from this active and engaged group to develop and refine future plans for the organization and the university. Reached 8,000+ users in four months after virtual networking space rollout.
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